


Axis II

by Sectumsempra



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Battle, Gen, M/M, Suicide, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-25
Updated: 2015-10-25
Packaged: 2018-04-28 00:35:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5071099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sectumsempra/pseuds/Sectumsempra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's seventeen and his mother looks at him with wide, frightened eyes and he despises her for it, for putting her fragility so readily on display, and she asks <i>"what is wrong with you?"</i> and he thinks that whatever it is, shouldn't she be taking some kind of responsibility for it, for the shape he's in, she was the one forcing him out into the world after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Axis II

**Author's Note:**

  * For [my bestie L who helped me with the ending](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=my+bestie+L+who+helped+me+with+the+ending).



He's seventeen and his mother looks at him with wide, frightened eyes and he despises her for it, for putting her fragility so readily on display, and she asks _"What is wrong with you?"_

and he thinks that whatever it is, shouldn't she be taking some kind of responsibility for it, for the shape he's in, she was the one forcing him out into the world after all.

He cannot answer her and he leaves home that night and never sees her again.

 

He joins the army and he's fucking _good_ at it, battle – feels pretentious thinking he was born for war but sometimes does thinks it's true. Sometimes he thinks that what was - is - _wrong_ with him is that he was always a soldier stuck in a place of peace.

Not that his childhood home was a safe haven, but it was not the kind of conflict that leaves any victors; his mother's limp, sleeping body on the couch; the sounds he remembers how she cried in her sleep and how, when awake, she was constantly threatening suicide. _”Do this for me, Bastian,”_ when she was out of booze and needed him to run down to the store on the corner. _”Do this for me or I won't be here when you wake up.”_ He knew she didn't mean she would leave - she meant her body would still be limp on the couch but that he wouldn't be able to shake her awake.

He was just a child then, one imagining never going back while running to the store on the corner. That was a struggle he didn't know how to handle -

 

but this - he knows _this_. He knows survival, becomes addicted to adrenaline, his heart pumping like a drum, echoing in his skull, and murder. He knows murder.

They say it's not murder on the battlefield but a rose is a rose is a rose.

It's not that he isn't ever afraid. It's not that he doesn't care if he lives. Sometimes he does feel something akin to motion sickness in the pit of his stomach when he thinks about death - maybe death is a bad place. But that's at night, in the dark, to the sound of the cicadas' monotone buzzing. When the danger is real and acute and _there_ he never panics. It's just like with nightmares and turning the lights on. Lit up by the Afghani sun and gunfire it doesn't seem so bad.

 

He's good at the primal, basic things - being alive and staying alive and murder, well, he's good at murder. At twenty-seven he's Colonel Sebastian Moran.

 

At twenty-eight he decides to see a therapist to look for an answer to his mother's question. Not because he _cares_ , not because he needs help, but because he's fucking curious as to if there is a scientific name for his kind of defect. He's not a psychopath he knows that much, he didn't torture animals for fun as a kid or watch his grandparents die without a twinge, he isn't _heartless_. But there are parts of him that doesn't quite sit right.

His therapist tells him a few weeks in, ”You haven't got a normal concept of danger. You have an extremely high threshold for fear.”  
He smiles at her and says ”Doesn't that just mean I'm brave?” She doesn't smile.  
”Being brave means doing things that scares you. To be brave you need to feel fear in the first place.” 

There isn't a scientific name for what he is, he doesn't quite make the cut for any of the fancy terms she suggests and tests him for. Oh well.

 

He's thirty-one, and he meets Jim. Jim has a smile like the devil and eyes that twinkle dark like the Middle Eastern nights. Seen through Jim's eyes, London, too, is a battlefield. Sebastian is a colonel, a born leader, but falling in behind Jim comes naturally. He finds his place there and he thinks he's reached his final destination.

It's a lot like war, that way.

 

Jim is something new altogether. He has the mind of a child and a madman and a king, you can never quite tell with him, the world is his playground and his kingdom, and Sebastian, well, Sebastian goes where Jim points, takes the shots that needs to be taken, washes blood off of his hands so Jim never has to, and comes to the conclusion as he watches the water in the sink run red, that Jim is the best and the worst thing that could've ever happened to him, all things considered.

 

The first time Jim kisses him it's because Sebastian comes by his apartment with blood in his stubble, not yet quite dried, red blossoms growing all over the front of his white shirt. He's just gotten out of a bar fight, the picked-out-of-boredom kind, when Jim texts him and tells him to be at his doorstep within the hour. Though whatever plans his boss had for the night, they're forgotten as Sebastian steps in and walks over to the sink, spitting blood. He turns around and Jim is there, all hands. He learns that night some of the very few ways there are of weakening Jim Moriarty's defences. Within weeks his own bed stands unused.

Just like everything else, sex with Jim is all adrenaline and pain, pretend powerplay – Jim's always in control, even when he isn't - they fuck in a way that leaves bruises and scars, in a way that leaves them aching and their sheets spotted red.

One of Jim's other men asks once as they're having a smoke after a job, "Aren't you afraid he's gonna kill you in your sleep?" - so word has travelled then, as words do - and Sebastian, tilting his head to the side;  
"Of course not."  
”But the man's fucking nutters, no offense."

"I do many things for him, taking offense isn't one of them," and, killing the cigarette under the sole of his shoe; "out of all the ways I could go out, him killing me in my sleep would be the least interesting. He tells me so all the time."

 

He's thirty-two and a cousin of his who lives on the same side of the law as Sebastian brings him the news of his mother's suicide. He tells Jim, who asks ”How does that make you feel?”

His voice, as always, is void of sympathy. There's only curiousity; Sebastian is a different species and Jim is interested in knowing how individuals of that species reacts to potentially painful stimuli. Sebastian feels like a labrat with an empty heart, says ”I don't really... feel anything. Should I?”  
Jim shrugs, says ”Well don't ask _me,_ ,” but that's bullshit isn't it, because though Jim is not people he knows what makes people tick better than anyone Sebastian ever met. He knows the human heart because he has taken it apart and watched what happens in the process.  
”She threatened to do it a thousand times. I'm kind of impressed that she... had the guts to do it, after all.”  
The corners of Jim's lips twitches as he says ”I do know how much you hate empty threats, Sebastian...”

Then they go about their day like nothing happened.

 

He's thirty-four and the man around whom his life has come to revolve these days puts his phone down on the table between them, between his own cup of Earl Grey and Sebastian's black coffee. On the display is a picture of a man Sebastian doesn't know, obviously taken without the subject being aware, with dark curly hair and clever, pale eyes.  
”Hm?” he says, mouth full of coffee. Over the rim of his cup, Jim looks at him.  
”Meet Sherlock Holmes.”  
_”Sherlock?_ What kind of a fucking name is that?” A legit question, really, but Jim doesn't answer it.  
”He's our new playmate. We're gonna have _so much fun_ together, he and I.” Jim grins. ”He's got a pet ex-soldier too. Such a wonderful coincidence, isn't it?” The display goes black. Beside them, a slow rain darkens the asphalt.  
”And where do I fit into this?” he asks.  
”Oh don't you worry, my dear, you will have your slice of fun. I expect him to be quite happy to dance, but just in case he isn't...”  
”No worries boss, he'll be dancing like no one's watching. Cheers.”

 

He's thiry-five and still doesn't know what is wrong with him, but whatever it is fits perfectly with what is wrong with James Moriarty, and so it's a shame, after all, that his mother isn't alive to hear about it; this fairytale ending of his.

**Author's Note:**

> Omfg. This fic has given me absolute hell. It's only about 1500 words but I have never struggled so much getting unstuck with, finishing and editing something so short before. Pretty sure I have never before spent so much time per word on something.
> 
> I'm finally free of its grip and comfort is welcome. o___o'


End file.
